Profile: Mark DeGuzman

Research Project Coordinator II

Staff

Department of Physics

Mark DeGuzman currently works as the Research Project Coordinator for Dr. Daniel Murnick’s Research Labs and is one of the main researchers for the IntraCavity OptoGalvanic System (ICOGS) a highly sensitive laser-based system to measure isotopic Carbon-14 in microgram gas samples from Pharmaceutical or Environmental Monitoring industries. He received a Bachelor’s of Science degree from the Materials Science Engineering Department from the College of Engineering at Rutgers New Brunswick. His undergraduate work under Dr. George H. Sigel in the Fiber Optics Materials Research Program on synthesis and characterization of chalcogenide glass sparked his interest in infrared laser applications. Earning a James J. Slade Scholarship, Mark traveled to the University of Sao Paolo in Brazil to present his research as part of a Rutgers Undergraduate Research Exchange program.

More recently, while working full-time in Dr. Murnick’s lab, Mark pursued his MBA at the Rutgers Business School to study wealth creation through technology commercialization and management and began to apply it to his ongoing research. With his business skills developing, Mark participated in the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps Program in Washington, DC as the Entrepreneurial Lead to determine the feasibility of creating a startup company around the NSF-funded university technology developed from the ICOGS research project. With Daniel E. Murnick as the Principal Investigator and Janet Murnick as the Business Mentor, the Carbon Analytics team used Steve Blank’s Lean Startup method, Alex Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas, and Customer Discovery to “get out of the lab” to find out the market demand for their ICOGS technology. Having done ~100 customer interviews, they have made a GO decision to pursue further activities in the ICOGS project to further develop a benchtop analytical instrument that they hope will one day be sold into the market.

The impact of participating in the NSF I-Corps Program prompted Mark to pursue greater research into the support and development of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) Ecosystem at Rutgers Newark. He is working with Dr. Kyle Farmbry, Dean the Graduate School in Rutgers Newark, to do a feasibility study for creating a Venture Fund for Rutgers-Newark based startups and other initiatives to support entrepreneurship in the greater Newark area.